


Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics

by larkingstock



Series: prompt nonsense [11]
Category: Darths & Droids
Genre: (this is what you get when you try to figure out their respective ages and then you realise...), Age Difference, F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, Sharing a Bed, my hand slipped, prompt, whoops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2019-12-31 23:03:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18323753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkingstock/pseuds/larkingstock
Summary: This is not the first time that Pete has noticed that life's gameplay is shoddy and exceedingly poorly-designed, but he's spent a (bullied/unrepentantly obnoxious, chicken/egg, w/e) lifetime finding ways not to let that be his problem.Unfortunately, that's not helping him now.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: **game mechanics**
> 
> It has been *years* since I played, apologies if I mangled/misremembered the concepts. But I couldn't resist.
> 
>  
> 
> The prompt nonsense series: the ongoing travails of one anon's quest to reacquire their errant writing mojo, with no guarantee of consistency, continuity, compliancy, or character appreciation.

There are rules, to this. Usually, that's all Pete would need. Pete _kicks frakking ass with rules_ , okay? There isn't a system he can't game, once he's got the mechanics of it in his hands. Even when they're inconsistent, or downright contradictory--hell, he thrives on that. All the better to be exploited. Give him a chink and he'll wedge a space dreadnought bristling with atomic missiles through it, and you should _see_ what he can do with cross-examinations and sidebars. Anyone who sees rules as things to follow, rather than things to _wield_ \--with ruthless and amoral execution--may as well just give up and go home now, in his opinion.

Home...That actually sounds really, really tempting. It's early but the official rehearsal dinner is more or less over, and they were up until sunrise this morning, regaling Corey and Ben about the Peace Moon plans campaign, and Pete's not _not_ built for all-nighters, anymore, but...he's no uni student, either, blithely pounding down Red Bulls in the face of exams and last-minute assignments and catching a handful of hours' sleep before doing it all again tomorrow.

Pete is no uni student, anymore.

Sally, though. Sally is.

This is not the first time that Pete has noticed that life's gameplay is shoddy and exceedingly poorly-designed, but he's spent a (bullied/unrepentantly obnoxious, chicken/egg, w/e) lifetime finding ways not to let that be his problem. So, he knows that rules like: "your mates' kid sisters are off-limits" have some flexibility built in, particularly when "mate" is more like "bloke you're still mostly on speaking terms with after an on-and-off decade of gaming together", and when said kid sister has been PCing in the same party just as long and way better, in your (not at all humble) opinion. That's not the one giving him trouble.

On the other hand, the one that says: "don't be that creep who after a decade of putting up with the cute kid in your party suddenly notices she's all grown up just because she's in heels and a swishy pretty dress and make-up--"

\--Home. He could just bugger off home, and get a decent night's sleep. Clear his head. Shake off the nagging sensation that "don't be that dickhead who chokes, and refuses to make the cute kid whom you've been friends with for half her life happy by dancing with her" is not just irritatingly incompatible with the other rules, but a deep and genuine fuck-up that's gonna have ramifications that go way beyond tonight. Ramifications way beyond obviously having failed a few spot-checks as to how she's _not_ just a cute kid anymore, and even beyond Sally being mad at him for the rejection until she forgets to be, again. Sally holds grudges like a champ right up to the moment she gets distracted by something sufficiently shiny, and Pete wouldn't be Pete if he hadn't long ago worked out that all he had to do with that was ride it out. Not that she makes it easy on him, but it _works_. Two of his favourite things.

It's the right play. It is absolutely the right play, and he knows it. Go home, sleep, ride it out. So he cannot account for why, as he finishes off his beer and leaves it on the balcony of the surf club, his footsteps do not take him through to say goodnight to Jim and Annie and everyone, or even straight out to the car park, but down to the beach he's been looking out over for the last ten minutes.

Ever since Sally slipped away down there, and wandered slowly along, her high heels dangling from her fingers, her bare feet in the shallow lap of waves running up the sand, ebbing and flowing. Unhappy.

Not that Pete could see her expression in the falling dusk, even if she hadn't stayed resolutely turned away, staring out to the ocean horizon--but he can tell. Sally doesn't hide much. Not in the way she holds herself...nor in the earlier crack of hurt and rejection and disappointment breaking across her laughing invitation to dance to some stupid current pop song that sounds like every other stupid current pop song, when Pete (panicked and) scoffed and waved her off towards (age appropriate) Corey. The whole interaction just unfolding in front of him with that frictionless inevitability when you critical fail on a saving throw, but with a bad feeling underneath that he hasn't been able to shake since.

Pete snorts, morosely, as he trudges towards her through the sand. He can just see it now. Roll to just go the hell home you unbelievable idiot: -2 Con modifier for sick sinking feeling in stomach, -4 Wis for holyshitwhendidSallyget _legs_.

And -15 Int for that expression on her face, and the present dejected slump of her young shoulders, making it impossible to keep any other thought in his own head besides the one constantly running through it: _you hurt her feelings_. You dickhead.

He stops, suddenly, a couple metres away, realising two things: he's about to hit wet sand and he should take off his shoes (already should have--sand gets everywhere), and she already knows he's there and he has no idea what to do next.

He crouches down and takes care of the first, anyway, rolling up his pants for good measure, trying to think of what to say to her.

_Listen, kid,_ yeah, good opening, establish clear relative disposition of the two parties, but he's at a bit of a loss where to go with it after that. _It's not that you're not cute,_ no, bad idea, don't introduce your own weaknesses into your own argument, sheesh, and even more don't give away your own compromised position, like, _You're an idealistic fiery valiant young woman like no one I've ever known, you light up every room you walk into and transform everything around you with your own brilliance and inspiration and grace, you're dazzling, I'm a cynical mercenary bastard who barely cares about anything or anybody, just a scoundrel taking the world for whatever I can get and I'm much too old for you, it would never have worked--_

\--Really, _really_ bad idea.

If only he could just hand her his (shiniest) dice, here you go, roll up the encounter and let's just take the outcome, sorry, I'm an asshole, what did you expect. But he's left rules well behind, coming down here, no game tables or character sheets to hide behind for this (not that he hasn't practised a certain amount of min-maxing in his own life balance--who could have ever seen it coming _that_ would suddenly blow up uncontrollably in his face). More to the point, though, he suspects Sally would take an extremely dim view of that. He's not the best at this unregulated interpersonal stuff...but he does know _her_.

Pete straightens, leaving his shoes and socks behind. He doesn't really look at her as he approaches, but that doesn't keep the way she's pulled her chin up and crossed her arms from crowding in at the corner of his eye. He jams his hands in his pockets, and goes with what he's got so far, "Hey, kid--"

Sally turns bright outraged eyes up on him, and he doesn't need to look and he shouldn't look but he can't help but look, so much life and feeling, so much searing _beauty_ in her she'll set the world alight but right now it's just him taking the full brunt of it and jesus, he does not have the hit points.

He is so screwed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **age gap**

Pete is so screwed.

There are no rules here. _None_. It's just him, and his flat...and a teenager. Just as soon as Sally gets out of the shower. At 2.30 in the Saturday-night-turn-Sunday-I-have-become-officially-too-old-for-this-frakking-morning.

He sits there on his sofa, briefly considering some theraputic dice rolling. It's been a while since he did any die-priming. But he suspects the value as a distraction, to put his brain on idle, would be limited--and that's before he glances over at his bookshelves, his rulebooks and his carry case...and what he left sitting on top of it.

That stupid kid's book, that Sally gave him (seven years since, but who's counting), and that he read. That he _read_.

And not just at the time. Oh no. At the time made a kind of reciprocal sense, it was only polite and she did eventually read _The Prince_ \--repeatedly, over the years, and that had been, well, frankly, _awesome_. So he'd read the dumb kid's book she'd given him in return, and it was _dumb_ (oh my god so dumb) and didn't make any kind of sense whatsoever (also let the man _fix his plane_ , jesus), though he never said that to her face. He's not _that_ much of a total shit (and annoying crying kids are one thing, but he made Sally cry once before and he has zero desire to ever, ever, _ever_ repeat that experience). He flipped through it, once or twice, in the intervening years, and yeah. Still super dumb. And twee. And kind of uncomfortable, so. (Oh, though--he did like the snake. He could respect the snake.)

So. Anyway. The thing is, a month ago at the rehearsal do he'd pretty much sucessfully bluffed his way out of being a royal dick about dancing with her (after getting hit like a Peace Moon targeting beam with her grown-up eyes and her grown-up smile and her grown-up high heels and her grown-up legs and, yeah, grown-up breasts and her grown-up _her_ , grown-up Sally, a cascade of category errors in a swishy pretty dress), mostly by...reseizing initiative by blurting out an invitation to dance. And proceeding to be such a hopeless goof that she totally bought his n00bishness as an excuse for having turned her down in the first place. And not because he'd literally just discovered that she possessed a targeting beam alone so superpowered it was capable of blowing him to smithereens.

Luckily for him, this bluffing part took place on a deserted beach with night falling and no one watching. Or they might have seen not only his daggy flailing to the strains of pop music coming out of the party in the surf club behind them, but also Sally taking pity on him. And insisting, as she so often does, this time on teaching him to dance.

He could keep her from actually succeeding--at any rate, there had been a lot of laughing, and he's pretty sure one way or another that making such a willing fool of himself had bought him her full forgiveness--but he couldn't keep her from the touching. The grabbing hands. And waists. And innocently putting his hands _on_ her waist, which seemed churlish to protest when she did it, but still left him with way more hands-on knowledge of her grown-up body than he's comfortable with having.

And the holding onto his shoulders and the flushed laughing up into his face, and who needs sun(s) or drinking games or natural 20s compared to the way Sally's eyes could light you up, the way she looked at him as he couldn't help but laugh back, shuffling about in the sand with her like two...

He doesn't even know.

So sue him, the day after that, Pete read the damn book again. Just for some kind of clue, maybe, or key, one not-making-sense situation to another (in retrospect, attempting to apply any kind of reasoning or logic was a mistake--at least their GM lets Jim _try_ to wrangle his ludicrous fantasy astrophysics, that Saint-Exupery clown seriously needed a friend like Jim--though, to be fair, Pete tends to feel that _everyone_ needs a friend like Jim). He did not find a clue, surprise surprise, but at least it didn't leave him as frustrated as the first time he read it, or so uncomfortable...which was kind of worrying, and was possibly a decade of Sally's influence...which was _also_ worrying.

Instead, it left him more kind of...thoughtful. The next day was Jim and Annie's wedding, which inevitably led to thoughts about special red roses (sorry, but puhlease), and trying not to get too distracted by Sally standing on the other side of the blissful nuptial couple, the dawn light on her in her bridesmaid dress and the delicate white flowers studded like stars through her hairdo (Annie's too--Sally had helped come up with all the...whatever, the pretty girly stuff they wore, and he's fairly sure some of her old costume sketches for Padme had gone under revision to contribute). Sally's hair had been in its hot-pink-and-maroon dyed phase, her punk undercut buzz beginning to grow out and ruffled into defiant spikes, and as he'd dragged his eyes away for like the tenth time while the ceremony was still going, he thought he could probably make a convincing case (to somebody. Somewhere. Maybe) that he was only looking so much because he was trying to figure out her wizardry of synthesis, how she could make two vastly disparate styles mesh so freakin' well.

But by the time the reception was over, and their little group sans the happy couple had found each other again, he'd been watching her out of the corner of his eye, or otherwise, for hours. And thinking about foxes. And _taming_. And the process of sitting a little closer, slowly, and a little closer, of establishing ties. Over years and years and maybe a whole decade or more. Until now she just naturally flitted in and out of his space like she totally belonged there, and how she looked to him first, every time, and he looked to her, whatever it was they might be reacting to--something to do, something to fix, something to snark at, and all kinds of laughs, from a hidden-to-everyone-else unholy twinkle in their shared eyeline to full-on busting a gut.

And how Sally just plopped herself down next to him out on the deck, cross-legged at his feet, back against the lounge and her shoulder blade propped against his knee, taking a cheerful swig of his champagne, as they all chatted about the wedding, and the only shock of it was how _un_ -shocking it was. He's certain, years ago, he didn't have Sally sitting beside him for practically every game session, bumping shoulders, sharing things, setting up each other's jokes, grumbling in solidarity about droidism...but he can no longer remember what that's like.

He'd swerved the conversation straight into doing please-jesus- _something_ \--a distraction, any kind of distraction, and the impromptu game session that followed was certainly that--before he could say or do anything incredibly, monumentally stupid, and definitely before any thoughts about being _responsible_ for what you've tamed could begin to--

Sally opens the bathroom door and his head snaps up, and then away, and then he fixes his eyes down on his coffee table to prevent any more of that too-revealing stupidity.

She's wearing one of his old t-shirts. And a pair of his boxers. And if he thought she looked good in heels and a dress--

So looking at her again is right out, so he does his best to gauge what's going on with her pause, and her uncertainly making her way over to him, through hearing alone, and doing a piss-poor job of it until she perches herself one sofa-cushion over, and says, in a small voice down into her own chest, "Are you going to lecture me?"

Okay, _that_ demands eye-contact. He stares at her, and her apparently genuine belief that he's about to read her the riot act. "Why on _earth_ would I lecture you?"

Her unfamiliar huddle loosens a little, to make way for familiar defiance and cheek to begin to seep back in. "You did last time."

"Oh, for--" Pete rolls his eyes. Because yes, in fact, he _is_ the mature one, here.

"You lectured me a _lot_ ," she persists. "You went on at me for a really, really, reallyreally reallyreally--"

He looks back over at her.

"-- _really_ long time."

His eyes narrow. "I wasn't feeling _heard_."

Sally lifts her head, stubbornly, riding the exact same line between smart-arse teasing and genuinely cross with ease. "Well, it was late, and I was tired."

"And I'd just _got you out of a police station_. Because you'd _got yourself arrested_." And yes, he'd taken it upon himself to give her a piece, several pieces, _all_ of his gorram frakking mind on that one, and he would absolutely deliver it to her again, so she's not _exactly_ wrong. Especially as she gives him that mutinous set of her mouth (that he's so fond of). (Argh.)

"Sally," he...warns. Yeah. _Reproves_.

"Pete," she mocks. Eyeballing him right back.

Sod it, he's seasoned enough to recognise a sidequest going nowhere fast. Besides..."What makes you think I'd lecture you about _this_?"

And just like that, she deflates, which is pretty much the opposite of what he wanted. She pulls her knees up to her chin and hides most of her face in them, not looking at him, so it's only all his accumulated points in Sally-skill that allows him to even make out the key words of "...feel stupid."

He feels unpleasantly weightless, concern fluttering anxiously up against his throat. "You're not stupid. It wasn't stupid. Hey. _Look_ at me."

She does, for a given value of "does" that includes "swivels her eyeballs in his direction and peers out from behind the eyeport made between her fringe and her knees". He moves to the edge of the sofa so he can face her more, ducking his head to better catch her eyes.

"You did the right thing. You followed your instincts. You've got good instincts."

"If I'd followed my instincts, I wouldn't have gone to the party in the first place," she argues, still somewhat into her thighs, but audible.

"Yeah, but...you're still second-year uni. You're allowed a few stupid mistakes--and let the record show, getting arrested does _not_ fall under that allowance--" and she lifts her face enough to squinch her nose at him. He resists an unholy urge to boop it. "See? You're a teenager. You're supposed to mess up a bit, but--"

"I'm turning twenty really soon!"

Okay, Pete knows when Sally's birthday is, and it does not take a mathematical genius (although, yes, thank you, he is one of those) to calculate that it is not _really soon_ , but since the objection got her face out from behind her legs, he'll let that one through to the keeper.

"... _but_ , the important thing is to learn from it. Incorporate it into your assessment for next time."

She looks away, chewing the side of her lip. "I don't even...I mean, all it was was just a bad feeling. And I got you out of bed--again--"

"Whoa. Hey. No." Granted, _call your criminal defence attorney mate_ is the obvious emergency go-to when you're in a police station in the middle of the night, (hopefully) rethinking your life and your choices, and he's not completely sure why she called on him to come get her this time around except for maybe how he's now demonstrated a good discretion track record, but. "Those are good feelings. To listen to." Sally gives him an odd look, and suddenly the quasi-rules groove he'd kinda managed to get into is _kablooey_. "I mean, about the party. Good, bad feelings to listen to. About the party. Leaving the--because of the, you know, bad feelings. Is good."

Sally has not stopped giving him an odd look, and he cannot blame her one single bit.

"Look," he sighs. "Just promise me, if you find yourself thinking 'I've got a bad feeling about this', you'll listen to it, okay? No matter if it makes you feel like you've been stupid, or lose face, or whatever." He swallows down the glag of experienced regrets and self-recrimination that have nothing to do with her, along with the anxiety that does. And catches her seeing it, igniting a flash of her own sweet needless worry for him, and he hastily moves on before she...well, before she anything. "And you can always call me. Okay? Always. Even if it's to help hide the body."

That gets him a grin. "Well who else would I go to?"

Excellent point, well made, and Pete nods approvingly for the impeccable logic. "So that's a promise, then?"

Sally nods, those serious thoughtful eyes of hers locked on his. And then, as though on inspiration, sticks out her hand. "I promise to always listen to my feelings no matter how stupid, and always make sure to make it your problem," she declares, and it's too late, his hand is already in hers and she's pumping it vigorously, just this side of giggling at him, and his own groan is redundant so he doesn't give it.

"Great," he says drily, instead. "Thanks."

"No wukkas." She yawns, hugely, and kind of tumbles herself upwards off the sofa in a splay of lithe nineteen-year-old limbs. In his shirt and underwear. "C'mon. Bedtime."

"W--ah, th...uh." Breathe. Breathe! "Um."

She looks back at him from the doorway to his bedroom, just a glance for how he's frozen in place on the sofa, and rolls her eyes like she's the mature one, here. "Don't worry, I know my virtue is safe with you. My parents thought you were a very nice boy, and you know how I always depend on their judgement."

Mischief and sarcasm aside--"When did they think that?" he manages to croak out, somehow, because he's gotta focus on _something_.

"When you tutored me, so I wouldn't be held back a year. When Ben left."

Right. Yes. Good. Just what he needs, the reminder that he'd _tutored her for primary school_ when she was _twelve years old_.

"Seriously, are you kidding? I'm not saying this isn't a pretty good set up you've got here, but it's not exactly geared for people staying over. _I_ don't even fit on that sofa, let alone you. Unless you've got a blow-up camping mattress stashed somewhere?"

No. Correct. His place isn't optimised for people staying over who aren't going to be, you know, staying over _in his bed_. Not helping. _Not helping_.

"Pete."

"Sally," he echoes, partially just on reflex.

"Stop being such a prima llama. I solemnly swear not to molest you, okay? But you're not sleeping on the floor of your own flat, and I sure as hell am not sleeping on the floor of your flat. We're friends, we can sleep platonically next to each other on your stupidly bignormous bed for one night. We'll barely even be in cooee of each other, look at the thing. This is not a big deal. Now, get your ass over here. And let's go to bed."

"Ha," he struggles, valiantly, even as he does in fact lug his too-tall ass up off his too-small sofa. "I've seen you, you're a sleep demon." And he had--last time, it was four in the morning before he got her home here, and what with the subsequent lecturing and all, by the time he was done and put her to bed (in his improv version of pajamas that she has once again adopted) he pretty much had to get ready for work, but when he took the arvo off he got back to find her sprawled right across his mattress taking up more space than should have been possible within the laws of physics, covers twisted everywhere. It looked like a deep-slumber war zone. "Nowhere is safe."

"I promise to be on my very best behaviour." She flutters her eyelashes at him winsomely.

"Ha," he says again. Redunantly. And slowly, with infinite hypocritical bad-feelings-about-this that he is not listening to, removes his jeans (because there is a reason he had to _improvise_ pajamas for her, and he's pretty sure both his trackie daks are in the wash, and to be honest trying to sleep in them does not bear thinking about--leaving his shirt on is uncomfortable enough). T-shirt and boxers. So now they're matching. Great.

"Get in, Sir Modest-A-Lot."

She's already in, on the far side of the bed, curled up and faced away from him. An arm stretched out casually behind herself to lift the covers for him. He can't even remember if he'd ever had that blithely uni-student laissez-faire even before...everything, but if he did, he hopes he bloody enjoyed it.

He gets in. To his own bed. Next to Sally. Who is a teenager. Wearing his clothes, smelling of his soap, his toothpaste.

He stares up at the ceiling, and it takes all of fifteen minutes before she starts snoring lightly. Twenty before her hand slaps over into his face...and try as he might, and he tries really, really hard, he doesn't even _mind_.

He is so, so screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow."  
> \-- _The Little Prince_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: **careful snuggling**

Pete is so, so screwed.

They may be way beyond rules, at this point, but that just meant he'd been all the more careful. He'd been so, so frakking _careful_ , and now _careful_ is so much exploded scrap and slag on the floor.

The past few months, Sally has wound up coming round to his place more weeks than she hasn't. And not--thankfully--by waking him up with a phone call at emergency-arse-o'clock in the morning. Actual coming over, often even before the sun goes down, and doing regular un-emergency normal things like grabbing dinner from the row of awesome takeaway shops down the road. He is not a man who's quick to adjust to substantial shifts wrecking the established order of his life--recalibration, at least on that level, is an arduous thing, for him. Running the calculations over and over again, searching for flaws in the model, adapting, refining...So he doesn't have an explanation for how, already, a weekend going by without her there gets him feeling antsy. Unsettled, like the world itself is off its axis. Like all the _other_ calculations are fundamentally, effortlessly wrong if they don't include her, sitting on his sofa with her laptop, surrounded by Engineering textbooks, while he sits at his table with his laptop surrounded by case files and depositions.

And he's not even clear on how it happened.

("Pete?"

"Sally."

"So...I know it's only been a week, but I had a stupid feeling, and thought I'd listen to it and call you and make it your problem?"

"...Go on."

"Well, some of my flatmates are throwing a party tonight and I have a crapton of work due Monday--I could go to the library, but--"

"Come over."

"It's just...I don't know how late they're going to go...?"

"Come over."

"You sure? I seem to remember an awful lot of whinging last time about how little sleep you got--"

"Sally. Come over."

...Okay, so he is _exactly_ clear on how it happened. He's honestly unable to keep track of how many people are inhabiting that place together, but it sounds like barely-controlled chaos half the time. So who is he to deny her a place where she finds it so much easier to study?)

And somehow, _somehow_ , every evening slips away so long and yet so fast, until it really only makes sense for her to stay the night again.

This, he really doesn't question, doesn't _want_ to be clear on. For the first time in maybe ever in his life he is afraid to look too closely at the rules of how something works, in case the very act of doing so makes it not, anymore. He's not a superstitious man (other than about dice rituals, but that's just sense), but for this, for the peculiarly arcane-feeling process of that moment late into the night of Sally looking up at the clock and turning an apologetic sigh on him, to him shrugging, barely looking up and waving her towards his closet to help herself, to the way she re-emerges clad in soft, shapeless combinations of his clothes to sleep in--"You coming?"--to him making his way, ultimately, to the opposite side of his bed, lifting the covers, sliding in...For that, Pete has been entirely prepared to be a mystic, he'll be a goddamn gullible-as-hell acolyte in any dweeby set of robes you care to hand him. Just as long as it please keeps _working_.

But this--this, right here, this moment, is the literal embodiment of _be careful what you wish for_ standing right there in the doorway to his bedroom.

In Starfleet science officer blue.

The super obscure t-shirt merch that he'd gone to pretty heroic lengths to track down and get his hands on as a teenager himself--and for a strangled moment he no longer knows anymore if he can regret not being able to get a real proper one at all. Because it'd be longsleeved, and Sally only picks out t-shirts. His brain nearly shorts out when he remembers he almost couldn't decide whether to get that or command yellow, just the thought of her in Kirk's shirt--

"You finished out here or what?" she asks and he nods, dumbly, and such is the extent of his befuddlement it's only now he notices she isn't even wearing a pair of his boxers. How the blue hem of the shirt she's wearing like a nightie flirts across the tops of her bare thighs, her boys leg undies still more modest than most things you'd see at the beach, but--and she notices the look. "Oh, yeah," she says, so thoughtless, so _casual_ , "you don't mind, do you? Only--your boxers are a bit big on me, they twist around a lot, it's not always that comfy."

He waves it off (because he can barely speak) and turns away (because if he doesn't he's going to combust, like the wreckage of _careful_ lying there between them on the floor of his living room). And doesn't dare risk any snarky commentary about how of course they get twisted around a lot given the combative approach she takes to sleeping, because that would only open up the whole can of worms about the solution that's evolved to that, and, well.

(The first time that he woke up in the morning half-curled around Sally, with Sally half-curled around him right back, the actual _first_ thought he had was to marvel at how much of a wonderful uninterrupted night's sleep he'd had, in light of previous experience. Of course, the second was to register softness and warmth and _Sally_ against him, in his arms, one of hers slung across his chest, her sleeping face tucked serenely into his shoulder. And before the third thought could do more than tense in order to start frantically flipping the finger to every pithy piece of advice Douglas Adams could print on the cover of a guide to hitch-hiking the galaxy for less than 30 $Altairian a day, she stirred, stretched, yawned her way halfway out of their embrace, and while he was still reeling from the insanely, unintentionally erotic feeling of her entire body flexing and arching at his side, she bounced up, with a thoroughly unembarrassed glance for their position together and a bright, "Hey, wanna do something today?"

They'd gone to the botanic gardens. What the current conversion rate is, Pete would have to check, but the day did come in at under $30.)

He takes as long as possible brushing his teeth, hoping at least she might be asleep by the time he joins her once more in his bed. It's futile, though. It doesn't matter how bignormous it is or how large and conscientious a gulf he leaves between their bodies. Whether it's his subconscious working out the sheer self-defensive efficacy of holding her close and still, or hers taking him for a handy (and, apparently, truly and against all evidence, _cuddly_ ) familiar landmark to latch on and anchor to, or some combination of both, they've ended up entangled together by morning every time since then, sleeping and peaceful.

And it is mindblowingly good.

He's not going to say it's better than sex, because as an absolute statement that is nonsensical, and as a relative statement it would require him juxtaposing "Sally" and "sex" for the comparison and he has determined a blanket policy of not entertaining anything even remotely close to thoughts like that in a time when he has somehow found himself platonically snuggling with her on an almost weekly basis. Because she hasn't (yet) demolished every instinct of self-preservation he has left. However, with the most stringent of mental quarantine protocols enacted around the comparison being made, it's pretty easy to say it's better than any of the hookups he's ever had before in that bed.

(He doesn't have time for dating and romantic partners and all that crap, but luckily he works with a lot of other people who don't have time for it either, among whom there's a fairly thriving and only sometimes questionably ethical casual hookup scene that he never had scruples about entering into when he felt like it. Which wasn't that often, but it was like, maintenance. To be honest he probably used to think about it less than he thought about taking his car to the mechanics--until recently, when he began to think himself in knots wondering if he just needed to get something out of his system, and if so, who with. And where. Bringing anyone home to this bed now felt...well, not wrong, obviously, and not _cheating_ , on anyone, because _obviously_. But just. Not something he wanted to do. In this bed, anymore. With anyone...else.)

Pete bangs his forehead quietly against the porcelain of the sink, bent over and gripping it tightly as the sound of the running tap echoes in his ears like a telling-off (by Sally) about wasting water. He can't, at the moment, remember if environmental preservation was ever on the roster of her many pet causes over the years, but he has more than enough material to extrapolate a template.

(He is not absolutely sure he can rule out his suspicion that he is sporadically--and currently--one of those pet causes. The occasional half-hearted remonstrances at him to be a nicer person had fizzled out years ago, at roughly the same rate that she discovered her own ruthless streak and honed it on the whetstone of misanthropy to its present gorgeous cutting edge, but this--

This he hadn't even noticed, at the time. Even now it's just a cobbled-together handful of impressions hanging like a misshapen charm bracelet, strung along links of that expression that she gets, worried eyes and stubborn mouth. And Pete can't say it didn't contribute to the infamous lecture, that night, after seeing her actually being held in a police station, when it struck him--that same look, that she'd given him when righteously declaring she was prepared to go to prison for breaking out the monkeys from her university. The same look as when she _had_ released the dissection frogs in high school--the look that had fallen like sundown over her face when she had learned that particular part of his past, some time before that.

Any possible connection hadn't stood out at the time because, well, she'd always cared about animals, and it's not like it was a new expression. Just the grown-up version of how she used to look at her brother, that year (and then about him, in the two years following). The expression of a much-younger sibling who can see things wrong and can't do anything about them, overlooked and dismissed and powerless to _fix it_. Internalising and resorting to acting out the problem in his face instead, in frustrated, belligerent, and increasingly frantic ways.

...He's beginning to worry the lecture mightn't have been long _enough_.)

Regardless, he can't stay hiding in his own bathroom all night. He takes a deep breath and turns off the tap. And, with a frisson down his torso of what he tells himself is dread, makes his way to his bedroom.

It's fine. It's gonna be fine. She'll be asleep by now, or nearly so, curled up on her side of the bed. If (when) they end up coiled together like sleepily fumbling magnets--or melded together like one combined superdroid, an idea he now wishes he'd never ever contemplated, let alone innocently voiced right in front of her--he'll just. Not react. Pretend to be asleep the whole time.

Yeah, that could work. That could totally work.

"Hey," she says, sleepily, as he gets in.

Aaaand he's spotted the flaw in his brilliant plan.

It's pretty hard to convincingly pretend to be asleep at this stage of things, so he resorts to just making the most neutral sound he can in response. It doesn't matter, though, because she turns over to face him, and it could be pitch black in his room and he swears he'd still feel her eyes on him, goddamn _tractorbeam_ , pulling him in and obliterating him all at once.

(It is not pitch black in his room. The yellow streetlights outside his building bounce overlapping gold parallelograms off his ceiling, and it had never once occurred to him how pretty it was until waking up in the middle of the night to see how it suffused dimly over Sally's face, crooked in against him, her sleeping breath feathering softly over the skin of his neck.)

Her eyes don't leave him and he can't move, can't even breathe as she moves over. Closer. Until she kind of nudges his arm, and he--slowly, hardly understanding--lifts it so it's out of her way. Until she's lying up against him, her head nestled on his bicep, her fingers tangled slightly into the material of his shirt at his sleeve.

Carefully--so, so carefully--Pete wraps the arm she's lying on around her back. Not too snug, but just--reciprocal. Still looking down into her face, innocently close in a way that he's forced himself to get used to when she's _asleep_ , but now, awake--searching for some kind of clue, because his brain's got sod all and, and-- _what_.

(In retrospect, being worried just from having had his hands on her waist for half an hour while they danced seems unbelievably naive.)

Sally sees the question on his face, and just shrugs. "Last time I woke up with your elbow in my back. Like dude. Learn some bedsharing etiquette." At which he's able, at least, to scoff incredulously, and she grins. "I figure, if we're only going to end up this way anyway, may as well settle in properly. Maybe teach you not to be such a bedhog."

For all he knows, that genuinely is a platform in her Make Pete A Better Human Being campaign. He closes his eyes and grumbles acceptingly--it's _definitely_ a grumble, it is so much a grumble, it in no way resembles a contented rumble, that's like...a whole letter difference.

Yeah, she has totally obliterated his brain.

"Hey," Sally murmurs again, and oh, this is not fair, he'd closed his eyes so he wasn't drinking in the intimacy of her open eyes, her sweet lips, her face so close, but now it's her voice stealing soft into the intimate dark behind his eyelids, her body wrapped in his Starfleet shirt and wrapped up in turn by _him_ , the scent of his laundry detergent and her shampoo mingling in his nose, his lungs, she is _killing_ him.

Which probably actually would make him a better human being, if only by the rules of eulogy, so. There's that.

He makes another non-committal sound--and this is how bad it's gotten, he can't even remember the periodic table to distract himself with. He could recite the frakking thing in full since he was _four years old_. The enormity of that might actually have made him freak out and do something about it, except, except now her hand has found his free one, and brought it up to her head, guiding it into her hair, and like--that's both hands occupied, right? He can't do anything freaked out, because he'd need his hands free to do that, and one is around Sally's back and the other is in Sally's hair, for some reason, so he can't. That's how that works.

( _Last_ time, whatever the elbow situation had been, _he'd_ woken up in the light of morning facedown in her shoulder and his arm heavy across her middle as she lay on her back, one arm tucked around his shoulders not unlike his around her now, and both hands playing silly buggers with his hair. He's not sure she wasn't carrying on some kind of hair-puppetry, albeit gently, putting on a play, like _The Existential Conflict of Pete's Non-Existent Better Natures, A Non-Event in Three Parts_ or something.

And it had still felt so good that even though he'd woken up, and she knew he'd woken up, he didn't move. Didn't draw back without making eye contact, as if nothing had ever happened, like usual. Just lay there, feeling her go to scritching her nails softly through his scalp until he'd had to stifle a moan, and _have_ to move before--

She said, "I like your hair," tugging lightly, sending sensations to another morning phenomenon he'd really rather not get involved in the conversation.

He stayed judiciously stomach-down on the mattress for the moment. And mumbled, "I like yours," into her shoulder, and promptly revoked speaking privileges from his mouth until it stopped thinking it could just go off on its own ideas like that.

"Yeah? I was thinking of something fuchsia-inspired, this time." Her fingers stroked and tucked the sleep- and puppet-mussed locks back behind his ear, and he shivered. And revoked moving privileges from every limb he had, because at this point every damn one of them was in danger of acting on its own ideas. "You know, that really deep dark pink, and purple. Something less clashy, more pretty."

He had no idea what to say to that, what she could even mean by _more_ pretty, and anyway, his mouth wasn't open for business. He wondered, after, if he should have made the effort, if he could've headed the whole thing off at the pass, because after a pause, the next thing out of her mouth as she fluffed the hair at his crown, was, "It's nice and thick. I think Ben's starting to thin out, up here."

Ben. Her big brother, who's never seeing his twenties again and is apparently old enough to be going bald (... _ha_ -ha). And yet who is still a year younger than _Pete_ , who, himself, has a half-sister who is old enough that he's got a nephew a year older than _Sally_. Who at that moment was lying there lending him her shoulder as a pillow to illicitly snuggle his face into, his arm draped across her waist as if it belonged there, as _The Distubing Compatibility of Pete's Sleepy Contentment and Inappropriate Lust Find Tricksy Ways to co-Mingle, A Collusion of Impulses in Mainly One Part_ played out in his finger-ruffled hair.

And revoked privileges be damned, he was half-scrambling--you know, casually--back across the bed, scooping his jeans up off the floor and getting them on in a co-ordinated marvel of preserved modesty.

"Was it something I said?" she asked, almost drily enough to hide how he'd startled and upset her.

"Bathroom," he croaked. Casually.

"Pete."

"...Sally."

"Look at me?"

Well, he'd turned back her way a little where he was standing, anyway.

"Can I ask you something?"

He hadn't answered, but he hadn't moved, either, which she interpreted basically correctly, and therefore continued, very matter-of-factly, "Are you in love with my brother?"

"Am I..." She had succeeded in getting his full and gaping attention, at least. " _Huh_?"

She'd pulled up her knees, a little bit miserable. "I don't know, I maybe thought--you guys have all that antagonism sometimes, you know, and maybe if you couldn't, you know, be with _him_ \--"

And that's when it broke over him, she thought he might be using her as some kind of proxy gay pining for her prat-in-recovery of a brother. That her brother was the one who, in some epic star-crossed tragedy, it was impossible for Pete's aching heart to be with. The shock of it--and her unhappy face--was enough for him to manage to scrape together an equally dry, "He's not really my type."

"...Oh."

He'd given her one last infinitely confused look and fled to the bathroom before anything else could escape the clog of things trying to get out of his throat, I'm not in love with your _brother_ , you... _dork_ , you beautiful, wonderful don't-even-understand-a-fraction-of-what-you-do-to-me woman, young woman, beautiful brilliant young teenager with everything ahead of you that shouldn't be hindered by me, or let my stupid embarrassing super mature crush ruin our really, really good friendship--)

"Feel that?"

Pete has opened his eyes again, _why_ has he opened his eyes again. Sally's eyes linger into his as her fingers prod him in the right direction, a little distinct bump towards the back of her scalp under his fingertips. He nods, not looking away, and she doesn't really release him, so he's not really touching her mole anymore but his fingers are still entwined deeply in her hair.

"I've been thinking of shaving my head completely. The full Sinead," she says, because she has the pop culture references of a person a decade older than herself, because that's what happens when you grow up with a sibling forging ahead in a whole other generation. "But I'm worried it's going to be too gross."

He clears his throat, and makes an effort to keep up, for godssakes. "I thought...fuchsia?"

"Oh." _That was last week, keep up for godssakes Pete_ , he waits for her to say, but instead she only shrugs. "Yeah, I was thinking something more dramatic. Really eye-catching."

"...Fuchsia's not dramatic?" he asks. He's gonna be honest, he's really struggling, here.

"I don't know. I guess." She's searching his eyes, before helpfully prodding him along. "But what do you think? If I buzzed the lot?"

"Um..." What does he _think_? Jesus. "I think you'd look good, um, whatever. Try it, if you want." His hand has loosened, slightly, slid down until his thumb is resting gently on the skin of Sally's nape, and really all he's trying to do is not tremble, while his heart hammers deep and hard like it's gonna choke him out from the inside through applied resonant frequency. He strikes out desperately for safer waters. "You're in uni, you--"

"Yeah yeah, teenager blah, experiment blah."

"Uh...yeah. Basically." Sally just looks at him, so still, and _waiting_ , and (he wants to tell her, we're in a relationship, do you understand that, I'm not an expert and this has already lasted longer than any steady thing I've attempted in the past, but this, sharing evenings like this and talking about whatever crap over dinner...and snuggled together in bed...and just doing our thing, whatever that is, together, bingeing old _Mythbusters_ episodes when we need a break, looking over your Engineering coursework and my dice schematics, this is a _relationship_ and it's the best thing I've ever had and when you get tired of this, whatever this is, whatever you're experimenting with or trying out or trying to achieve on me, when you go flitting off to the next thing that catches your attention and all your beautiful passion you're going to tear every piece of me you've touched away with you, it's going to break my fucking heart) what the hell does she want from him? He takes his hand back, trying to flex out the sense memory of her fingers on his and all the silky hair she wants to chop off. "I thought you had the whole trying-stuff-out routine down, anyway. You don't need my permission."

She closes her eyes, and then huffs quietly. "That's what I like about you, Pete," she says, finally, before cuddling her face into his shoulder where he can't really see her anymore, close and warm. "It's never, you must do this, you can't do that. You always just want me to be myself. Even if that's bald and warty."

Okay, so...then something's upset her, or someone's been at her about something, probably her mum or dad or even Ben, he still gets that preachy do-as-I-say not-as-I-do thing going on sometimes. But she's pretty clearly signalled that's the end of discussion for tonight, so Pete doesn't push it. Just, with all the care in the world, draws her closer in and puts his cheek to the top of her head, a deliberate equilibrium so they'll stay, holding her like this, as long as possible as they drop off to sleep together.

He doesn't know how long it's been, but they're still in the same position when he rouses, somewhat, to some half-stifled sound from Sally and he realises she's woken up, that she's _upset_ , and maybe it was a mistake not to push it, after all. And maybe he's not quite asleep enough, but it's the middle of the night, and simple, and he'll pretend, to excuse how his hand returns lightly to her hair, and then trailing forward, softly, to her cheek, a stroke of his thumb he can't pretend wasn't deliberate, so he does it again, and again.

"Hey," he whispers, turning a little more towards her, a little closer, trying to make a fortification of his whole body against whatever it is that's hurt her. Because it's the middle of the night. And he loves her. "What is it?"

Sally lifts her head back, just enough to look him straight in the eye, not enough to lose contact with his fingers. Her eyes young and wide and sad, and direct, and forlorn and so _young_ , reaching in to clench his heart preparatory to ripping it right out of his chest, and he wouldn't even stop her.

"I can't keep throwing myself at you, Pete," she whispers, staring up at him, because it's the middle of the night, and simple. And his chest cracks in two. "Are you ever going to make a move?"

He is so, so, _so_ screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I believe also that he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will not be successful. [...] for if, to one who governs himself with caution and patience, times and affairs converge in such a way that his administration is successful, his fortune is made; but if times and affairs change, he is ruined if he does not change his course of action. But a man is not often found sufficiently circumspect to know how to accommodate himself to the change, both because he cannot deviate from what nature inclines him to do, and also because, having always prospered by acting in one way, he cannot be persuaded that it is well to leave it; and, therefore, the cautious man, when it is time to turn adventurous, does not know how to do it, hence he is ruined; but had he changed his conduct with the times fortune would not have changed."  
> \-- _The Prince_


End file.
